Red Subversion
by KowaretaTsubasa
Summary: [HieixOC] Post series. It’s been two and a half years since the demon world tournament, and Enki’s reign is slowly drawing to a close. Yusuke returns to demon world on a visit where Hiei and Mukuro seek him out bearing strange news... and a request.


**Red Subversion**

By: Kowareta

Pairings: HieixOC

Summary: Post-series. It's been two and a half years since the demon world tournament, and Enki's reign is slowly drawing to a close. Yusuke returns to demon world on a visit where Hiei and Mukuro seek him out bearing strange news... and a request.

For those who ask, yes, I like Mukuro.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho.

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_This is the edge of darkness, the edge of the world. But there is no light. They ask: If there is an edge of darkness, surely there is an edge of light? There are lamplights that dot the edge, but they are not lit. There are candles, but they do not burn._

_They ask: Where is the light? _

_There is no light. There doesn't need to be. This is the edge of a world that is made of fire; the edge of a world where fire grows angry in every heart. It is a red world with red skies. The world is lit with flames and just over the edge lay darkness… _

_Souls born with fire burn forever…_

---

A dark figure treads a foggy path. The world is more than foggy here. It is a fog that silences the world. It moves like steam and clings like smoke, an ashy remnant of some forgotten fire long left guttering.

The figure knelt and peered at the two candles left by the smooth, blockish stone before it. The stone is a marker, a symbol. The whole landscape in the fog groans with rock. Wind carves out hollows in the stone and sand flows endlessly from this side of the world to the other. Flowers curl dreamily around the marker and one strong hand reaches out…

They are wildflowers. There is nothing special or unique about them. Some might even be weeds. They are found in almost every terrain on the world—like ubiquitous insects. It's not the thought that counts or what the flowers are supposed to mean…

_It's the idea_, thought the figure.

The visitor is a young man with serious brown eyes and a strong chin. Everything about him is strong. There's something there, a presence or maybe a look, which suggests the young man can change things, can change the world.

And he's not even sure what he can _do…_

There _were _weeds, and someone had left a cattail. So much colorful vegetation littered the marker, all of which had been torn from the earth and placed near the stone. It surrounded the stone marker—each one hand-picked, every last flower, weed, and cattail.

The young man smiled solemnly and pushed aside some of the display. He placed a rock in the area he cleared.

"Because rock-headed doesn't even begin to describe you, old man. And I barely even knew you."

The serious eyes watched the candles burn in their holders.

_Funny_, he thought, _and here I was thinking this place would be empty. Never expected a whole garden…_

Some of the flowers had dried, and some weeds had withered, but despite this most looked freshly picked. The figure arranged the vegetation so that it circled the rock. It was the kind of arrangement that was supposed to be thoughtful but ended up looking like bad decoration. The candlelight flickered once and kept fighting hopelessly to shine light forever.

He heard footsteps behind him.

"Lord Yusuke, we were not expecting you."

"What's with the 'lord,' Hokushin?" asked Yusuke without even bothering to look back. "I thought it was Enki who's the big shot now, not me."

The bald-headed man watched as the young lord shuffled the flowers around, fruitlessly trying to make them look better. Yusuke had no taste in design. The flowers drooped aimlessly wherever he put them.

"It is true that when you last left, the whole of demon world was placed in King Enki's hands, but no one demon can manage it all. This world is composed of a series of city-states with their own kings and landowners who squabble amongst themselves for power. Occasionally you get a city like Lord Yomi's, but that is the exception, not the rule."

"So how's all this make me a lord again?" inquired Yusuke.

"King Enki decided to allow the old lords some sort of authority where kings and landowners of the city-states have to answer to them. Basically he's splitting power in order to keep the world most manageable. Kings and landowners of city-states answer to the old lords, and the old lords answer to King Enki."

"Hmm," murmured the young man. He wasn't really listening. He didn't much care for changing politics. Then again, if he had listened he wouldn't have understood most of it. By rule of apathy, the young man had decided somewhere along the line that if politics didn't bother him, he wouldn't bother them. Yusuke gestured towards the vegetation. "What's with the weeds?"

Hokushin sighed. "We _tell_ them not to do that. We say to bring _real_ flow—"

"_Why_ are they here?"

"It's been two and a half years, my lord. People get thoughtful."

"You can add mine, too, Yusuke," a somber voice said from behind.

The young man nearly bolted upright, but unfortunately remembered something called dignity at the last minute and wound up falling over onto his rear.

Strangely enough, this didn't seem to affect him very much. No one but Yusuke could have so much dignity on his shoulders while still sitting firmly in the dirt. The dark-haired boy possessed his own unique brand of dignity. He always had. What kings managed with royal courts and shiny crowns, Yusuke could do with nothing but his fist and a grin.

You'd be amazed at what kind of respect is given to people who can point their index finger at a person and never once see where the body lands…

Yusuke gazed up at the owner of the voice.

Hokushin frowned.

The newcomer was a woman with baggy pants and a cowl-necked shirt, whose raggedy orange hair that fell over one side of her face. A half of a mask rested on part of her face and concealed the ugly scars beneath. She watched him with one blue eye. She held out a purple flower.

Yusuke blinked at it almost as if he wasn't sure it was going to burst into flame or not.

"It's Mukuro, right? Why is it I'm always giving the old man your flowers?"

"Because you allow yourself to."

She knelt down next to Yusuke and placed the flower atop of the rock.

"Why a rock?" she asked, looking at the plain gray stone placed on the grave.

"Because he was as stubborn as one."

The woman nodded approvingly.

"Raizen _was_ a fool," Mukuro murmured, looking at the other flowers.

Hokushin refused comment, but felt it necessary to give a resentful look.

Yusuke stood up and brushed off his pants. He hadn't been back to demon world in a long time, and as soon as he came back, he ran into one of the top competitors in the Demon Tournament years ago. Smooth move, he thought.

"Er," said Yusuke, with great and powerful conversational skills.

And then—movement. The candles flickered and there was the sound of cold steel.

"Hello, Hiei, so nice to see you again," said Yusuke holding onto the flat side of a very sharp blade. The small demon holding onto the other end of the sword grunted and tugged it away, sheathing it.

"Why are you back, detective?" asked Hiei. Or as close as Hiei could get to actually asking. Asking, for Hiei, was a lot like demanding—the terms were practically interchangeable. The only difference was that one involved waving a sword and stabbing someone, and the other involved the _implication_ of waving a sword and stabbing someone.

Red eyes glared at Yusuke in a direct, uncomfortable fashion. It was the kind of intense gaze that made people wish they could stop existing just until the eyes turned away.

"Hey, I'm not a spirit detective anymore," Yusuke told him lamely.

"We heard," said Mukuro, standing up. The fog swirled around her like a cloak and she wore a crooked smile. "But we also heard that a certain ex-spirit detective now takes cases from the common populace and has quite a lacework of connections in demon world. We hear he's self-commissioned."

Yusuke noticed the expressions both the demon lord and the fire demon wore and felt a familiar sinking feeling. It was the kind of feeling he got when he knew something terribly exciting was about to happen and for once he wished that kind of thing would happen to someone else.

He grimaced.

"Oh, hell, what this time?"

---


End file.
